Peter Seitz is a graphic designer

Graphic designer

A graphic designer is a professional within the graphic design and graphic arts industry who assembles together images, typography or motion graphics to create a piece of design. A graphic designer creates the graphics primarily for published, printed or electronic media, such as brochures and...

, author, teacher and business owner who served as the first Design Director at The Walker Art Center

Walker Art Center

The Walker Art Center is a contemporary art center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is considered one of the nation's "big five" museums for modern art along with the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Hirshhorn...

 (Minneapolis, MN), and helped establish the graphic design

Graphic design

Graphic design is a creative process – most often involving a client and a designer and usually completed in conjunction with producers of form – undertaken in order to convey a specific message to a targeted audience...

 program at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design

Minneapolis College of Art and Design

Minneapolis College of Art and Design is a private, nonprofit four-year and postgraduate college specializing in the visual arts. Located in the Whittier neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, MCAD currently enrolls approximately 1,000 students offering curriculum that includes...

.

Early career and education

Born in Schwabmünchen

Schwabmünchen

Schwabmünchen is a regional centre in Bavaria in the administrative region of Swabia south of Augsburg in the Augsburg district.-Location:Schwabmünchen lies about 20 km south of Augsburg between Lech and Wertach on the western edge of the Lechfeld, a gravel plain. Through the city flows the...

, Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 in 1931, Seitz graduated from Ulm Hochschule für Gestaltung (Ulm University of Design, HfG)

Ulm School of Design

The Ulm School of Design was a college of design based in Ulm, Germany.Founded in 1953 by Inge Aicher-Scholl, Otl Aicher and Max Bill, the latter being first Rector of the school and a former student at the Bauhaus. The HfG quickly gained international recognition and is now viewed as being second...

 with a Bachelor’s degree in Visual Communication

Visual communication

Visual communication as the name suggests is communication through visual aid and is described as the conveyance of ideas and information in forms that can be read or looked upon...

 in 1959, after studying with graphic designers Tomás Maldonado

Tomás Maldonado

Tomás Maldonado . Argentine painter, designer and thinker, is considered one of the main theorists of the legendary ”Ulm Model”, a design philosophy developed during his tenure at the Ulm School of Design in Germany.-Biography:Born in the Argentine city of Buenos Aires, his artistic formation...

, Max Bill

Max Bill

Max Bill was a Swiss architect, artist, painter, typeface designer, industrial designer and graphic designer.Bill was born in Winterthur...

, and Otl Aicher. He then received a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Graphic Design and Photography from Yale University

Yale University

Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

 in 1961, studying with Paul Rand

Paul Rand

Paul Rand Paul Rand Paul Rand (born Peretz Rosenbaum, (August 15, 1914 — November 26, 1996) was an American graphic designer, best known for his corporate logo designs, including the logos for IBM, UPS, Enron, Westinghouse, ABC, and Steve Jobs’ NeXT...

, Bradbury Thompson

Bradbury Thompson

Bradbury Thompson was an influential American graphic designer and art director of the twentieth century.-Life and work:Communication Arts said of Bradbury "When it came to the blending of photography, typography and color, nobody did it better than Bradbury Thompson.....

 and Herbert Matter

Herbert Matter

Herbert Matter was a Swiss-born American photographer and graphic designer known for his pioneering use of photomontage in commercial art...

.

After Yale, Seitz was hired by the architectural firm, I.M. Pei & Associates. In 1964 Walker Art Center director Martin Friedman appoints Seitz design curator and editor of the Design Quarterly, a national publication of applied arts, architecture, and design.

In 1968, opened his first graphic design firm, Visual Communication, Inc., as a solo practitioner. Seitz went on to organize the Minnesota Chapter of AIGA, and Siggraph. In 1970, Seitz joined Dewey Thorbeck and Al French (architecture), Roger Martin (landscape architecture), and Steve Kahne (computer specialist) in launching InterDesign, the Twin Cities’ first interdisciplinary design firm. Major InterDesign projects include: the identity programs and signage systems

Signage systems

Signage systems are visually oriented information systems, consisting of signs, maps, arrows, color codings systems, pictograms and different typographic elements...

 for the Minneapolis Parkways, the downtown St. Paul

Saint Paul, Minnesota

Saint Paul is the capital and second-most populous city of the U.S. state of Minnesota. The city lies mostly on the east bank of the Mississippi River in the area surrounding its point of confluence with the Minnesota River, and adjoins Minneapolis, the state's largest city...

 Skyways, the Minnesota State Capitol

Minnesota State Capitol

The Minnesota State Capitol is located in Minnesota's capital city, Saint Paul, and houses the Minnesota Senate, Minnesota House of Representatives, the Office of the Attorney General and the Office of the Governor...

 and the Minnesota Zoo

Minnesota Zoo

The Minnesota Zoo , is an AZA-accredited zoo in Apple Valley, Minnesota. When it opened on May 22, 1978 it was fairly revolutionary in its exhibit design. The zoo, built in a suburbanizing rural area, had more space to house exhibits and was one of the first zoos to organize its animals by their...

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In 1971, Seitz began teaching graphic design classes part-time at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. He served as Chair of the Design Department from 1977–1978, and as Acting Chair of Design from 1998-1999. Seitz assembled one of the first computer graphics laboratories at MCAD in 1981. Seitz retired and became MCAD professor emeritus in 2002. His life and work is chronicled in "Peter Seitz: Designing A Life".

Selected Honors and Awards

• American Institute of Graphic Arts, Fellow, AIGA Minnesota Chapter
• Graphis Annual
• Society of Environmental Graphic Designers
• Society of Publication Designers
• Society of Typographic Arts